Stages of Mastery

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Educational Psychology
Name and define the stages of mastery an
individual is likely to pass through on the way
to becoming an expert professional educator.
Discuss the major influences and give examples of
appropriate activities or goals for each stage.
Define and differentiate critical thinking and
self-regulated learning as they apply to
classroom teachers.
Last revised by W. Huitt (2005)
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Stages of Mastery

• Novice

• Advanced Beginner

• Competence

• Proficiency

• Expertise

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Stages of Mastery
The following provides some examples of how these
stages can be applied to your development as a
professional educator.
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Stages of Mastery
1. Novice
Learns to recognize various objective facts,
initial concepts, and specific rules
This stage is the beginning of the preparation of
becoming a professional educator.
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Stages of Mastery
1. Novice
There are five courses associated with this stage
of your development

• MSED 2000 Survey of Educational Concepts

• BVED 2400 Comp Tech for the Workplace

• PSYC 3110 Educational Psychology

• SPEC 2000 Serving Students With Diverse Needs

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Stages of Mastery
2. Advanced Beginner
Learns to recognize facts and elements not
defined in the Novice Stage and learns more
sophisticated rules
This stage continues your development in your
undergraduate program and involves 300- and
400-level courses in your major. Your
undergraduate training ends with a student
teaching experience.
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Stages of Mastery
3. Competence
Begins to recognize more context-free and
situational elements simplifies and improves
performance begins to problem-solve
Begins as you accept full-time employment as a
professional educator. It generally takes 2-5
years of on-the-job training (and, in my opinion,
a master's degree) for a person to become a
competent professional educator.
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Stages of Mastery
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Stages of Mastery
4. Proficiency
Learns to identify quickly the important elements
of the task develops rapid fluid style based on
intuitive understandings
Only a small percentage of professional educators
ever reach this stage. These are the teachers one
normally thinks about when we remember the
teachers who had the most influence on us.
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Stages of Mastery
4. Proficiency
Learns to identify quickly the important elements
of the task develops rapid fluid style based on
intuitive understandings
Individual's style begins to be expressed and
experience (rather than school training) begins
to be a major factor in performance. Most people
have acquired a mentor who can guide them beyond
the general education available through
coursework.
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Stages of Mastery
5. Expertise
Experience-based holistic recognition of
similarity leads to natural, fluid performance
that almost always works
We may only interact with a handful in our entire
education experience. These educators are widely
recognized as superior. They are also likely to
be mentors for educators who desire to become
like them.
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Stages of Mastery
At your stage of development it is important to
remember that it takes years of training and
experience to become a competent, let alone a
proficient or expert, teacher.
All we ask at this point is that you work hard
and try to learn from your mistakes. However, you
need not feel guilty when you make mistakes it
comes with being in your stage of development.
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Critical Thinking
Critical thinking is the disciplined mental
activity of evaluating arguments or propositions
and making judgments that can guide the
development of beliefs and taking action.
Important components

• Disciplined mental activity

• Evaluate arguments or propositions

• Making judgments

• Guide beliefs and actions

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Self-Regulation

• setting goals for upgrading knowledge

• deliberating about strategies to select those
  that balance progress toward goals against
  unwanted costs and,

• as steps are taken and the task evolves,
  monitoring the accumulating effects of their
  engagement.

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Self-Regulation
Critical thinking is a necessary, but not
sufficient, condition for self-regulation.
Three additional factors are included

• Goals must be set

• Action must be taken

• Feedback must be considered and corrections taken

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Becoming a Master Teacher
Both critical thinking and self-regulation are
necessary to attain the level of competence.
As these activities become habitual, movement to
the proficiency and expertise levels becomes
possible.